From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Sun Mar 18 12:36:13 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe Subject: Re: Precious Spectre Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 10:28:53 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 274 Message-ID: References: <20010315223456.03832.00000456@ng-mn1.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 984738533 15629 204.145.148.154 (16 Mar 2001 10:28:53 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 10:28:53 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.universe:157006 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) TirHuan wrote: >I think Spectre is gettin' a little too precious by half. I got >nothin' against big metaphysical themes and religion-based characters. >But I want CHARACTERS, dagnabit, with personalities, involved in [snip] >big disappointment. "It's okay the world's been destroyed, God'll fix >it all, nothing happens except what God wants and when it doesn't he >changes it." Whay not just say "don't worry be happy?" I don't see [snip] >Mainly a lot of completely arbitrary situations, Abin Sur in hell and >all (Hal hardly KNEW Abin Sur), and the Wrath, and Mystos, and Hal. [snip] I agree with much of this. More specific response after the spoiler space. Hopefully I can wrap this up more quickly than I did my post on Swamp Thing over in .vertigo some short while ago. >spoiler space >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj >hj OK, basically, here's how I see it. I liked the concept of The Spectre, and ravenously bought up and read through the Ostrander/Mandrake run. I thought it was exquisite fun, with both grand spiritual/supernatural drama and full-formed characters exploring their relationships with one another and the history of who/what Jim Corrigan and the Spectre have each been, ending in a touching send-off for Corrigan and the setup for continuing the Spectre tradition with someone new sometime later. As for Green Lanterns... Neat archetype, never really had much problem with any of the characters who've been shown in the role wearing the ring (well, 'cept maybe G'Nort). I was/am willing to run with the idea of Hal as Spectre, although it's quite flawed (more on that later, if I think to come back to it). If nothing else, I think Day of Judgment has some value in that I like the idea of the Sentinels of Magic, and if this was how they were to be introduced instead of whatever other event that was supposed to spotlight them, then so be it. Actually, hell, I'll mention it now. The one prime flaw with Day of Judgment and all further things Hal-Spectre is thus: Hal does not qualify to be the Spectre according to the criteria that it has been shown has been used to select Spectre-hosts since the death of Christ. The Spectre is/was not only the "Wrath of God," but also the "Vengeance of the Murdered Dead," etc. Spectre hosts, from Caraka up through Corrigan, were people of conviction who were murdered and whose souls cried out for vengeance now, rather than God's justice when their murderers died. They were offered the power by God, and took it to punish evil as they saw it. Snide comments about editors aside, Hal was not murdered; he sacrificed himself in an act of repentance, after having burned up all the grit and conviction he had as a Green Lantern in his transition to Parallax and back. And while he might possibly still have that iron will that made him the much-vaunted "greatest Green Lantern ever", it's not the only thing you need in order to be a host sufficiently in control of the Spectre force, as, I will grant, has been getting shown in the current series. Anyway, I liked the initial 3 issues of the LotDCU story. I thought Caul made for an interesting villain, and I think the conflicts shown between him and Hal had the sort of style I'd expect for a Spectre story. The fourth issue, though, gave me a severe case of the "What the fuck?!"s. Specifically... OK, so Hal sits back and lets God swoop in and fix everything and make it right, directly, no problem. Huh? Uh, wait, I thought that the whole point of the Spectre and Zauriel and the other angels, heck, and priests and ministers and people just choosing to do good, and the whole "Why does God let bad things happen to good people?" question, etc., was that God *doesn't* get directly involved in what goes on in the world, and either has extensions of Himself to move in mysterious ways for Him, or expects people to make the world right themselves because He gave it to them. In this case, the solution shouldn't have been for Zauriel to tell Hal to back down and let God handle it, but for him to say, "OK, Hal, you're up. You're God's hands on this one. Time to make the world right again," and let the crux of the conclusion be if Hal can expunge the Parallax-hubris and restore things without trying to "fix" them. In both the LotDCU story, and the first couple of the main new Spectre title, we're shown Hal's new best spooky pal, his GL predecessor Abin Sur. I'd be... disappointed if it's nailed down that yes indeedy, this is in fact the honest-to-goodness spirit of Abin Sur, and all the stuff about his being around is actually face-value of what we've been shown. Why? Because it makes very little sense in the face of what's been shown before. Abin Sur's spirit has been shown before. The primary previous instance I can think of was during... Wheeler's -- I think -- run on Swamp Thing. That appearance was eminently more sensible, as it built on and continued with the ideas that'd long been used, in Swamp Thing from Moore on and in other titles, of death leading into the afterlife that was appropriate for your beliefs and your soul's assessment of where you should go. It was pre-Vertigo -- in point of fact, it was shortly after Invasion!, and covered the idea of how spirits of aliens did or did not form for themselves their own afterlives in Earth's astral realms rather than their own planets'. Abin went to neither Heaven nor Hell nor any other, but had his own localised afterlife in the custom of his race, which presumably would have grown to accommodate any other Ungarans who died on or near Earth. The reader was shown the localised afterlives of Durlans, and that Dominators had no concept of such and thus moved among everyone else's to study them. In the end, after he and other spirits helped Swamp Thing to rescue his daughter Tefe from Hell, Abin entered the pyre in his afterlife-home, as a portal back to the spirit realms of Ungara. On the whole, I found it to be rather better written, and a nice way to close out his chapter in things, and would rather it not be declared invalid. (BTW, I'll have to admit that I wasn't geek enough to know the name of Abin Sur's home planet and race. I had to use glcorps.org's profile on him to get that information, as well as remind me which issues of Swamp Thing that stuff happened in without having to go over and drag out my collection. It's ST v.2 #97-98, in fact.) OK, so, presumably, Abin's spirit *should* no longer be anywhere near Earth's afterlife. But even if the end of ST#98 is invalidated, we're left with a different odd inconsistent idea: All right, I'll admit that I kinda like the contracted-time cascading-responsibility idea that Hal has explained to him by "Satan/(God?)" and Abin in Spectre #1. I think it's a neat idea, and think it's somewhat clever of DeMatteis and might possibly like to see him explore further. Just not in this book, nor in any other book set in this universe. Basically, it manages to completely contradict a whole lot of what's gone before regarding Hell and the afterlife in general. Yes, I can see some of the "time collapses in Hell" thing, but as perception of passage of time while one's being punished, not as an actual collapse that makes you accountable for all ripples of even your most well-meaning actions whose consequences you couldn't possibly foresee. Also the part that, again, it's always been that one's afterlife is according to one's beliefs and where one believes one should go. For Abin to have been in Hell from death 'til Hal became the Spectre reeks not of self determination of afterlife, but of being judged externally to go to an afterlife he doesn't believe in as humans do. Similarly to this new view of Hell/the afterlife, I find the idea of a Satan who's maybe also just another face of God to be an interesting idea that needs exploration anywhere *but* this universe, if for no other reason than the consideration that doesn't the DCU *already* have enough beings claiming to be the One True Satan/Devil?! Did we *really* need *another*? I can think of four right off the top of my head (Lucifer as used in Sandman, Demon, and the current Vertigo Lucifer title; First of the Fallen as shown in Hellblazer; Neron from Underworld Unleashed; Satanus), not to mention all the various others that've gone at various times for the top spots in Hell (the rest of the Hell triumvirate from Swamp Thing, Sandman, Demon; Etrigan; Baytor; etc.). Hrm. Tired, fading. Must finish post before going to bed. I have liked a few things about the series so far, and I'll go into them now before getting more into problems more recently introduced. I have liked, thus far, some of the conflict between Hal and what is now being called The Wrath. Hal's got an iron will, but he's lacking in the self-faith and conviction it takes to be a properly in control of the Spectre's power. It makes sense that since Hal doesn't quite know yet how to smite evil in a way that meshes with the no-kill superhero mores from his old life, he's gonna waffle about, and that the primal Spectre force would use that to take some initiative that Corrigan or someone else more directly suited to the Spectre's mission would squelch. I've liked, just a bit, that Batman and Superman get their own clues of what's what (I've always thought Torquasm-Vo and Torquasm-Rao, from the first time I heard of them, were pretty freakin' silly ideas, being effective psychic/spiritual meditative techniques... coming from the cold and scientific post-Crisis Kryptonian culture. Huh?! On the other hand, I think it works for Batman to push through his memory blocks through his own focused willpower, strong enough to keep him going as a crime-fighter in Gotham and as the member of the JLA who can keep up without powers). I like Zauriel's involvement, insofar as that it's something of a God matter, and thus in his purview. I think some of the idea of Mistos is kinda neat. Now for the downsides again. Sorry. :-) First off, just to get it out of the way: >Zauriel tells Carol Ferris and Jack Jordan "There is a profound >connection between your souls and his. You three have danced together >not just for one lifetime but untold thousands of lifetimes." >GAAAAAAACK! Isn't it enough that Carol was the love of his life for >years? That Jack was his BROTHER? Isn't that a profound connection? [snip] Wholeheartedly agreed. Huh?! Why the hell is this even the slightest bit necessary or even vaguely considered to be a good idea to retcon in?! Yeah, sure, reincarnation, fine. Some folks believe in it. Good for them. I can handle the Hawks, Hector Hall, etc. doing the re-incarnation thing, 'cause at least in cases like those, it makes sense due to connections to Egyptian and other such cultures. I can handle Mitch Shelley, before he got the Tektites and became Resurrection Man instead, reincarnating, 'cause that was part of the schtick he had in his backstory. I do not yet see anything that makes this make sense for Hal, Carol, and Jack. Between this and JSA, this seems to be Zauriel's month for dropping the reincarnation bomb on everyone, innit? OK, and I've already covered my opinion on the spiritual meditative techniques coming from a scientific culture, so... Well, unfortunately, as much as I'm somewhat intrigued by the concept behind Mistos and her long-gone idyllic society, I can't help but have the feeling that this is also somehow something that's been done to death here and there. Nothing specific, I just get the feeling like I already know where the main plot twists are to be found in this. I'm somewhat more concerned with the dynamics being shown in both the LotDCU story and so far in the comic, regarding Hal, the Wrath, the power of the Spectre, etc. In preceding history, courtesy of the O/M Spectre series, what's traditionally been The Spectre has been the fusion of the soul of a human, and the primal Spectre force, that being the power of a repentant fallen angel, with that angel's personality ripped away and torn asunder, with that power being moulded into the agent of God's Wrath. The Wrath brought the power, and the human brought the soul-anchor. Put in a weak soul, like Louie Snipe, and the Wrath'll walk all over 'im and start getting old-skool Old Testament on folks. Put in a strong soul, like Corrigan, and the soul keeps things grounded and while things may be gruesome, they won't go too far. But take the Wrath away from the soul, and the soul becomes just a ghost, albeit sometimes a ghost with the grit to keep himself in the mortal plane and solid enough to kick some demonic ass, like Corrigan during Underworld Unleashed, plus unless you plug a new soul in where it was taken out, then by all means, the archangel Michael would come put the smack down on the Wrath, tell him to either re-merge or return to Limbo and await a new host before being allowed back on the mortal plane. In this series (plus LotDCU), however... We see Hal kicking the Wrath out of the equation, initially thinking he'd destroyed it, but keeping the power, which is odd, since the Wrath is the power in question. All the personality was stripped away until there was just the power, remember? So with the Wrath seemingly gone, or trapped my Mistos, or bonded to Zaurel (more in a moment), or whatever, all Hal should be left with is being a ghost on Earth, struggling to keep it together enough to grab hold of pasty-face again without drifting back into non-corporeality and a quick trip back to Purgatory. (BTW, as to the look of the Wrath, I must say I prefer Mandrake's take on it to the look Sook provides. The fanged skull in the green cloak, without much more substance than that, gives a more supernatural 'death of the first-born of Egypt' 'trailing death in his wake' look and less like some weird alien in a green cape.) Instead, Hal still somehow maintains the costume, and maybe some of the power? And why hasn't Michael come down at all to either kick the ass needed to get the Wrath bonded to a soul again, or to drag it back into Limbo? I don't know, 'cause there's new rules here, but they haven't been explained to us, if they've even been thought through at all beyond just what DeMatteis wants to have to make his own story ideas "work". Oh, and at the end of #3, The Wrath forces a bond with... Zauriel? Hang about, there was an entire issue of the last run ending with the lesson taught that the power of The Spectre is not for the living. And while the form may be angelic, it is made of living flesh and bone; mortal, but alive. How is this allowed? >I'm reading the book now for 2 reasons: I'm interested in some of the >characters because of their past before this series. And because I >think, myabe, maybe it's heading somewhere interesting. Intense >curiosity. But then I think of the first 4 issues (in LOTDCU), and >figure I'm kidding myself. Time to drop it. I'm getting it for much the same reason you have been. Interest in previous versions of the character, potentially interesting direction of story. I figure I'll consider the LotDCU story separately, and give the current series until probably #6 before finally deciding if this is just too much messing around with what was really a quite elegant and sensible cosmological structure for stories both spiritual and supernatural, both of which suit the Spectre well, but not so much the man inside the cape, born of the Silver Age and a long-time idealistic space cop. Fortunately, it's still not gotten bad enough yet for me to want to throw the comic across the room and cancel on the spot. Here's hoping it improves... Slarti Now *seriously* in need of sleep. -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Wed Mar 21 12:01:12 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe Subject: Re: Precious Spectre Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 19:12:11 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 82 Message-ID: References: <20010316140158.20675.00001356@ng-cn1.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 984942731 97145 204.145.148.154 (18 Mar 2001 19:12:11 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2001 19:12:11 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.universe:157150 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) ATKokmen wrote: >slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) writes: >>Judgment and all further things Hal-Spectre is thus: Hal does not >>qualify to be the Spectre according to the criteria that it has been >Actually, there might be a way around this. If I recall correctly, >the sequence of events in the Days of Judgement miniseries was this: [snip] >They chose Hal Jordan, who comes back to life; >Hal Jordan is summarily killed by the bad guy; >*then* Hal Jordan bonds with the Spectre-force. > >As I recall, many readers were shocked at the issue that >brought Hal back to life, only to see him killed on the last >page. It seemed silly and stupid and arbitrary and a [snip] >A bit of hand-waving, but there you have it... It doesn't really quite happen like that, not as shown and not as what's shown would make sense. First, what's on the page. Just pulled out those issues from my collection. In the last few pages of part 3, a rift opens and the heroes who'd gone to Heaven and Purgatory return through it, Hal in tow. Batman expresses his... doubts as to the wisdom of giving the power to the Spectre to Hal, who, it may be noted, is currently wearing his Green Lantern costume. Hal rashly goes to fight the Asmodel-Spectre, who turns Hal into green stained glass and lets him fall and shatter into a million pieces. At the start of part 4, the heroes mope over the bits of shattered Hal, hoping that the crew in space can get the Spear of Destiny back to Earth soon and mentioning that they don't have time to go find another soul. Dr. Fate, with the JSA in tow, steps in and casts a spell to put the glass back together and turn it back into Hal's soul. "My helmet just whispered a small spell of reversal from the Book of Ys, allowing me to stop the Spectre's curse before your soul was shattered beyond repair." Hal's infused with some redirected energies from some of the Sentinels of Magic, which he uses to form GL-ring-like constructs of dead members of the GL Corps to fly with him and fight. Captain Marvel uses the Spear of Destiny on Asmo-Spectre, and Hal flies into the Spectre to attempt to wrest control. Note that at no point is it mentioned in the story that Hal's alive again. He is instead referred to as a soul first by Dr. Fate in that quote above, and shortly afterwards, when Katana asks Batman who Hal is, Batman responds with, "A ghost, I think. The mad ghost of an old friend." So no one on the scene seems to think Hal is alive. Also, in the time between arrival from Purgatory and gaining energy from the Sentinels, Hal had already managed to fly around and do some tiny amount of ring-like construct creation, making a few planes to fly up and fight a bunch of pestilence flies. Hal shouldn't be able to do these things if he were actually returned to life, nor should he have appeared in a Green Lantern uniform, as flight, constructs, and the costume were tied to wearing a GL ring, which he wasn't anymore. And, presumably, the entire point of his sacrificial dying in Final Night was that it took *all* the energy he had in him, including *everything* he'd taken from the battery *and* his own life force, to pull it off, and thus it shouldn't be that return to life had returned some of that. Besides, there's a bad precedent and undesired ramifications to be had from the idea that all one has to do to bring someone back to mortal incarnated life is to go into the afterlife and drag his/her soul back. *However*, it is possible that what little he does in Day of Judgment before gaining additional energies *can* be explained by his still being a disembodied ghost on the mortal plane. There's precedent for it; Corrigan was separated from the Spectre a couple of times during the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre series, and he was able to still maintain a mostly solid spirit form with his mortal appearance, capable of moving around, phasing through walls and otherwise impossibly for a living person, etc., through sheer force of spirit and will. The planes would merely be an extension of this that makes use of how Hal knows to do things, and powered by his soul for as long as he had energy to make it happen. It makes more sense to me this way, but still leaves the problem that Hal was never murdered, his soul doesn't cry out for vengeance, etc. etc. The Spectre-force should drop kick Hal's soul back to Purgatory and find a properly-qualified newly-dead person's soul to make the offer to. It can't be *that* hard. Slarti -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Wed Mar 21 12:01:16 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe Subject: Re: Precious Spectre Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 06:01:16 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 55 Message-ID: References: <20010320161127.27584.00000090@ng-mj1.aol.com> <3ab7ea65.289284@News.CIS.DFN.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 985154476 30438 204.145.148.154 (21 Mar 2001 06:01:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 06:01:16 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.universe:157374 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) quimico wrote: >On 20 Mar 2001 21:11:27 GMT, bhmarks@aol.com (BHMarks) wrote: >>I would have preferred a mainly new character for the new Spectre >>host. Oh, it would have been all right if he had some connections to >>an existing character, or if it was someone we had seen - briefly - at >>a previous time. Connections to the past can be interesting. >That is why I say Jason Todd's MOTHER would be better. >She is -effectively- a new character, as she was introduced >just a little before her death. She was as unjustly murdered as JT. >She has connections to Batman (through Jason) but not too proximate ones.... >Besides, a female Spectre would be a novelty, and there is nothing in >the rules forbiding it... Nope, sorry, Shiela Haywood doesn't qualify to be the Spectre either, IMO. Why? Well, I had to go dig out my TPB of "A Death in the Family" to confirm, but she fails what could be called the Moral Righteousness test. The reader's first introduced to her when the Joker shows up, making allusions to her having performed "illegal operations on teenage girls" back when she was in Gotham. I imagine he meant abortions, but it's unspecified. While I'm not going to pass judgment on the right/wrong of abortion (please *please* PLEASE let's not have one of Those Threads), but at the time, it was considered a Bad Thing to do, so it's possible she felt it was wrong but did it anyway. Plus that there's mention that apparently one of those operations led to a girl's death, which she may feel responsible for. She then is involved in Joker's plot to steal medical supplies and replace them with his laughing gas. But she's under duress, so that's maybe excuseable. Where she unquestionably fails the test is where it's revealed, just before Joker starts beating on Robin, that she's been embezzling from the medical funds, and helps Joker capture Robin (thus effectively being at least partially responsible for his death) because an investigation of what Joker made her do would also make light of her activities. Survey says? *Bzzzzt!* Plus, I think that she, and Jason, and anyone who's already dead, should be disqualified because they're already dead, and thus have already ended up in an afterlife. Male or female (and Ostrander and Mandrake showed that there'd been female Spectres in the past, so it's not that novel an idea), the host spirit for the Spectre has always been selected by being someone's newly-dead soul, raging, demanding the ability *now* to confront evil, particularly their own murder and possibly the imminent murder of their loved ones. And this makes sense, at least so far as that if one has arrived in an afterlife, it's because one has passed on from life, and gone on to what they think they should go to afterwards. You get the Spectre force because what you think you should go to is back there to kick some ass. Not because you died however many years ago and the job's available to apply for. Slarti Who had a momentary flash vision of Snapper Carr being murdered and becoming the new Spectre. Ummmm... no. :-P -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Wed Mar 21 12:01:20 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe Subject: Re: Precious Spectre Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 07:16:14 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: <20010320161127.27584.00000090@ng-mj1.aol.com> <3ab7ea65.289284@News.CIS.DFN.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 985158974 33256 204.145.148.154 (21 Mar 2001 07:16:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 07:16:14 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.universe:157377 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) [Yes, I'm following up to myself. It's late, and I missed saying some things I meant to.] Chris Pinard wrote: [snip] >confirm, but she fails what could be called the Moral Righteousness >test. The reader's first introduced to her when the Joker shows up, [snip] >ended up in an afterlife. Male or female (and Ostrander and Mandrake >showed that there'd been female Spectres in the past, so it's not that >novel an idea), the host spirit for the Spectre has always been selected >by being someone's newly-dead soul, raging, demanding the ability *now* >to confront evil, particularly their own murder and possibly the One of the other things I missed saying was to connect this "Moral Righteousness test" idea to the question of deserved afterlife. Basically, the idea being that in order to be offered the power of the Spectre in the first place, one seems to need to have been killed and destined for an afterlife appropriate to adherence to a good solid moral/ethical structure. Caraka was destined to a final incarnation with his wife before reaching Nirvana. Corrigan would've gone to Heaven. Both of them having had strong beliefs of right and wrong and having worked all their lives to live right, even if Corrigan's sense of right and wrong still left him leeway to be such a hard-boiled ass sometimes. Jason's mom did bad wrong things, and new she did, and wasn't too big on the morality thing. Jason himself was more flat-out angry than he was concerned with right/wrong, taking on being Robin so he could bust some heads, which was why Batman took him off active duty before his recklessness got himself killed. Except that it did anyway. Oops. Slarti Still haunted by the idea of Snapper-Spectre... -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here? From slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net Sat Mar 24 15:39:02 2001 Path: sidehack.gweep.net!slarti From: slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.dc.universe Subject: Re: Precious Spectre Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 20:26:25 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GweepCo in 3D Lines: 206 Message-ID: References: <20010320161127.27584.00000090@ng-mj1.aol.com> <3ab7ea65.289284@News.CIS.DFN.DE> <3ab983ef.121262@News.CIS.DFN.DE> NNTP-Posting-Host: sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Trace: sidehack.sat.gweep.net 985465585 52809 204.145.148.154 (24 Mar 2001 20:26:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sidehack.sat.gweep.net NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 20:26:25 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.6.3 (FreeBSD) Cache-Post-Path: sidehack.sat.gweep.net!slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net X-Cache-In: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Xref: sidehack.gweep.net rec.arts.comics.dc.universe:157866 X-Cache-Out: nntpcache 2.4.0b5 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) quimico wrote: >slarti@sidehack.sat.gweep.net (Chris Pinard) wrote: >>confirm, but she fails what could be called the Moral Righteousness >Being the Joker who he is, I wouldn't be too hasty to take his word for >it either, even if she is shown to be afraid of being exposed. Perhaps >she didn't perform those operations, but knows that she can't escape >the (fake) evidence Joker set up implicating her. That is where *BZZT!* In that initial scene, Joker doesn't start out threatening to expose her. Rather, he asks if she's still performing the "illegal operations." She makes no comment refuting that that happened. The initial hint of a threat comes in when Joker speculates that Sheila's superiors don't know of that part of her past if they trust her with handling distribution of medical supplies. More than not refuting, she then acknowledges the operations by stating that all of that was behind her now. And it's not like she has to make any kind of show, since it's just her and the Joker in her tent. >the coarseness of the medium can help. Besides, even Parallax did > murder alot of GL himself - so she would be (at worse!) only as bad >as he is in that respect. This isn't a matter of comparative badness. Hal as Parallax was bad, so Hal does not deserve to be Spectre. Sheila was bad, so she does not deserve to be Spectre. >>she's under duress, so that's maybe excuseable. Where she unquestionably >>fails the test is where it's revealed, just before Joker starts beating >>on Robin, that she's been embezzling from the medical funds, and helps >>Joker capture Robin >Did she know he was her son at the time? Or did Yes. Jason found her, she recognized his last name, and yes, she was his mother. She told Jason about falling in love with his father, giving birth to him... Oh, and she tells him about the botched operation caused her to have to flee the country, which corroborates Joker's statements. Story goes on to include how Jason's father, instead of taking Jason and fleeing to England to be with Sheila, fell in love with another woman, married her, and how Sheila let them raise Jason as both their child rather than making a messy legal battle to get custody. Later, when Jason confronts Sheila about the work she was doing for the Joker, he offers to help, opening up his coat and revealing his Robin costume. So, yes, she knew that Robin was her son Jason. >she know that the Joker meant to kill him, or >even had the time to consider that? >Unless she did a lot of this very coldly She didn't know per se that Joker meant to kill Robin, but she knew that to protect both the Joker's interests and her own, anyone investigating these activities were going to have to be stopped *somehow*. She pulled a gun on him, and had a look on her face that said that she, at least at the time, was prepared to use it if she gave any trouble. And given that the dialogue when Joker first approached Sheila indicated that they were acquainted and knew one another back when she was in Gotham, I'd have to say that she'd have to have been suffering from author-induced extra stupidity to not know that Joker typically handled a problem by killing people. >and calculatingly, she is not even as bad >a Parallax. Again, irrelevant; this is not a matter of comparative badness. >>ended up in an afterlife. >That would also include Parallax. I'm not saying she is perfect - for >the Spectre role - from the justice point of view, but as a compromise > - in-story motivation/editorial convenience, she is the best compromise >there is. This would indeed include Parallax. This is why, again, *neither* of them are qualified for the job. And no one who isn't perfect "from the justice point of view" should be shown as having the job, because being the Spectre is all about that point of view. There should be no compromising on this, as it's one of the central points/themes of the character. "Editorial convenience" is a shitty excuse to have to use, and indicates an editor who shouldn't be responsible for this character. >>novel an idea) >I didn't say it would be a "new idea", but a novelty on the DC stories >- and I don't know of any female Spectre being portrayed as existing >in "present" DCU. Neither Golden age, nor Silver, nor now. You're right. There weren't any Golden or Silver Age female Spectres; Corrigan had the job the entire time. There was an issue of the Ostrander/Mandrake series where Madame Xanadu had taken the power from Corrigan, and was sort of acting as a female Spectre, but it wasn't working like it should, with the ending that she relinquished the power back to Corrigan, stating that the power is not meant for the living. Aside from that, the only female Spectre(s) shown were flashbacks to Spectres before Corrigan. >>, the host spirit for the Spectre has always been selected >>by being someone's newly-dead soul, raging, demanding the ability *now* >IMO that much detail concerning the "newness" of the >would-be-Spectres is debatable. And even if the Spectre has "always" OK, it's somewhat debateable, but the samples provided -- Jim and the predecessors shown in the O/M run -- all operated that way, with the indication that the demand for justice *now* being the hook used to make to the worthy candidate the offer of being able to go back and mete out that justice. >been sellected among the new, it doesn't matter all that much >- of all the characters in the DCU, the Entity who empowers Except that neither Sheila Haywood nor Hal Jordan would ever have been offered the task in the first place, because they are not worthy. Re-arranging a bit, 'cause I want to answer something further down than what you had to say right next: >Besides, again, moral righteousness is not equivalent to innocence. >Who knows how innocent that 1930's cop truly was? You're right. Innocence is irrelevant. Corrigan was a good man, doing good things right up until his death. Sure, he was brutal about it, hard-boiled and violent, but those were the times, and those were the things that a cop of those times were like and had to do. The important part is the moral righteousness, the intent to do good. >Parallax certainly isn't. Indeed. Parallax wasn't innocent, and he was also not righteous. Hal knew that he was going to have to kill all the good people as well as the bad in the destruction of the universe leading to his creation of his utopia, but viewed it as a necessary evil. *BZZT!* Sorry, Hal, there goes your morals, down the drain. Only thing keeping you from Hell when you die is a final world-saving sacrifice, and that'll only get you upgraded as far as Purgatory. And now: > the Spectre has the least time limitations. He could easily >go to the moment of Haywood's death and "sellect" her then, >transporting her soul to the moment of when she is to begin >her career (explainable in two panels). GAAAAHH!!! No! Horrible idea! None of that! Sure, The Presence may not be limited in time, but what that means is that God is willing to wait until a bad person has died to render judgment and mete out justice. God does not need the Spectre out there doing the Wrath thing. If anything, the Spectre is still active because the person who becomes the host demands justice *now*, which represents the most stringent time limitation. Doing this "transport the soul through time" thing would not only be an invalidation of the way things have worked, but would rob the host soul of the immediacy of the justice sought just as much as would making the soul wait until there was no host currently with the Spectre. And I saw your posts over in the other part of the thread, about making it so Haywood was "working undercover", etc. etc. I presume that the idea was to invalidate all the stuff in "A Death in the Family" about Sheila being a bad person, so her death would be retconned as unjust and she would then be a better person and thus maybe qualified to become the Spectre. Something tells me Bennet's follow-up "White Martian" idea was facetiousness on his part, attempting to highlight the ridiculousness of this whole "undercover" concept. Have you read "A Death in the Family" ? Have you read it at all while debating this thread and attempting to support your ideas of events and circumstances surrounding the deaths of Jason Todd and Sheila Haywood? Have you thought of how your ideas of inserting previously-unstated "undercover" and "Joker made things up and she was playing along" concepts would completely undermine the drama and plot twists from that story, which is itself central to your idea of having her be the Spectre? There is nothing in the existing text and storytelling to support your suggested insertions, which are not in any way what one might call "transparent" to the existing story. Joker didn't just make it all up, as shown by her acknowledging what he was talking about, and then also telling Jason about the botched operation. She almost certainly wasn't working undercover, as she was alone with Jason when he showed her his Robin costume, and would've been stupid to not tell him she was undercover and come up with a plan with him to actually catch the Joker. Not to mention that "working undercover" would imply that there was someone/something she was investigating, which would've been shown in the course of the story, and couldn't have been the Joker, 'cause no one knew he was going to seek her out until he got there. Under a plain, straightforward reading of the existing story, Sheila Haywood was a bad person, and when she died, she was likely destined for whatever her beliefs had for Hell, or maybe *maybe* Purgatory. Jason Todd was a fairly good person, though angry and violent and not terribly forthright sometimes. When he died, I'd like to think he made his way to Heaven for having actually accomplished some good. And both died and went on to their "reward" at a time when there was already a Spectre, and God is not in the habit of stepping in directly and teleporting a soul through time, so the job was not available. What you're doing is attempting to change an existing and coherent story, making it less so, in order to justify ideas which have been shown to be flat-out flawed and incorrect. To quote Dr. Who: "You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common, they don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit the views, which can be uncomfortable, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering." Let it go. They're dead, they should be Spectre. Neither should Hal. Ultimately, it's still better to have the primal Spectre force boot Hal back to Purgatory, let God wipe any "memory" of this last foray like used to be done before Corrigan took the job, go back to Limbo to wait, and hook up with a worthy righteous vengeance-seeking just-murdered soul in the here and now. Slarti -- Chris Pinard: Just zis guy, ya know? -- slarti@gweep.net Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?